I was once asked for my autograph in the shower on one of my rare visits to the gym. I was washing my hair, facing the wall, when I was tapped on the shoulder so already it’s quite inappropriate. I turned round and there was another naked man standing there with a piece of paper. And I think ‘if you can’t see how inappropriate this I am just going to have to play along’ so I took the paper, which is slowly becoming mulch, and, sort of… carved my name in it.

No one was coming to save Przemyśl. Conrad von Hötzendorf, Austria’s chief-of-staff, admitted the fact himself in a communication to the garrison commander, Hermann Kusmanek von Burgneustädten. Austria-Hungary’s most important military fortress, besieged for months by the Russians, contained thousands of soldiers and massive amounts of valuable war materiel. Yet every attempt to save Przemyśl had withered away in the Carpathian Mountains, where hundreds of thousands of Habsburg soldiers had died. Przemyśl’s garrison had eaten nothing for months save horse meat and saw-dust filled bread substitutes. Things were even worse for the city’s civilian population. Surrender was inevitable.

Kusmanek felt that honor demanded one last sally before he gave the Russians his sword. He would lead the garrison in one last attempt to break out. On the night of the 18th, the defenders burnt their documents and city’s banknotes, and Kusmanek gathered up as much strength as possible near one of the gates. The idea was to surprise the Russians, but rain and snow meant he was slow to concentrate his men, and the Russians knew perfectly what was coming. They waited in their trenches and readied machine guns, and when the Austrians launched their assault they were massacred. Over half the garrison was dead or wounded at this point, both soldiers and local militia levies. Not a scrap of food remained, and the city would surrender only three days later.